Security in 2013: Making IT a safe bet

The proliferation of devices, virtualization woes, APTs, among others have ensured that security ranks right at the top of a CIO's to do list.

More than 80 percent of the respondents (enterprise solution providers) in ChannelWorld's State of The Mart 2013 survey expect IT spends to increase in 2013 for security solutions.

"In 2013, investment in security will surpass the current year's spending with the Government being actively involved through increased regulations," says Ekta Aggarwal, Program Manager, Information & Communication Technologies (ICT), Frost & Sullivan. Besides, traditional verticals like BFSI, service providers and government, sectors like retail, IT/ITeS, manufacturing and defence are expected to invest heavily in security, she added.

More than half of the respondents are already dabbling in the security domain and an additional one-third intend to explore this space in 2013.

"Advances in technologies such as cloud and next-gen networks will challenge enterprise architectures running on legacy systems. Investments to counter cyber threats will increase as more enterprises opt for Web-based platforms," says Aggarwal.

The Changed Landscape

According to Sanchit Vir Gogia, Principal Analyst, IDC India, CIOs have been orchestrating services as they now look at public, private clouds, hosting and application heavy server farms. They are managing the changed environment which is complex with stricter SLAs. "Enterprises want to deploy cloud resources to fuel the growth but keep the operational cost low. Security is not a traditional offering but is sourced from datacenter federation, encryption etc," he says.

Chennai-based Fourth Dimension Technologies has been implementing security solutions for the past five years. "Security has gone beyond firewall and anti-virus. SIEM, authentication and log management are the areas where we think adoption will happen as more devices invade the enterprise environment," says N. Jagannath, CEO, Fourth Dimension Technologies. "The demand has increased lately due to the security concerns around BYOD and cloud. From an end-point security, DLP is important."

2013 will be a year around application level security, database security and infrastructure platform for Bangalore-based Unisoft Infotech. "Most customers realize information is an asset. Therefore, they will look at security from multiple levels. With information going onto cloud, the concern is security. The success of cloud depends on how secure the information is," says Deepak Nakil, Executive Director, Unisoft Infotech.

"BFSI and manufacturing are focus verticals. Deep selling to loyal customers is logical as they trust us. Also, there are few tier-2 partners with expertise to execute complex security projects," says Jagannath. We expect to generate 15 to 20 percent of our revenue from security in 2013 compared to the 10 percent in 2012.